BODIE (reluctantly). Sure to be; it isn’t six yet.
POLICEMAN (in his most terrible voice). Well, leave her to me.
BODIE. You mustn’t frighten her. I can’t help liking her. She’s so extraordinarily homely that you can’t be with her many minutes before you begin thinking of your early days. Where were you born, officer?
POLICEMAN. I’m from Badgery.
BODIE. She’ll make you think of Badgery.
POLICEMAN (frowning). She had best try no games on me.
BODIE. She will have difficulty in answering questions; she is so used to asking them. I never knew a child with such an appetite for information. She doesn’t search for it in books; indeed the only book of mine I can remember ever seeing her read, was a volume of fairy tales.
POLICEMAN (stupidly). Well, that don’t help us much. What kind of questions?
BODIE. Every kind. What is the Censor? Who is Lord Times?—she has heard people here talking of that paper and its proprietor, and has mixed them up in the quaintest way; then again—when a tailor measures a gentleman’s legs what does he mean when he says—26, 4—32, 11? What are doctors up to when they tell you to say 99? In finance she has an almost morbid interest in the penny.
POLICEMAN. The penny? It’s plain the first thing to find out is whether she’s the slavey she seems to be, or a swell in disguise.